This was written December 23th, 2025
Creative Bankruptcy
Here he was, the author, staring at his blank canvas. He was hoping ideas would just flow out of him, straight onto the page (or screen really), yet nothing would come out.
No matter how much he thought, no matter how much he tried to get inspiration, nothing came of it. Maybe it was the worry about people’s expectations, maybe it was choice paralysis, or maybe he just wasn’t inspired at all. Yet it’s probably the former, since whenever an idea popped into his head, he found excuses to discard it. Instead of trying to find a nugget of gold within the idea, he simply saw the flaws associated with it. He wanted, alas, pure perfection.
Usually, his creative bankruptcy didn’t last long, a few days at most really, and he could use that time to handle other duties, like editing other texts or parts, which didn’t rely nearly as much on creativity. Yet, with the looming deadline, he simply couldn’t find it in him. Whenever he started reading, all he thought about was how little time there was left, how he simply _had_ to complete this.
Yes, expectations lead to anxiety, which in turn can lead to inaction, paralysis. But no time for such concerns, he _needed_ results. He felt desperate. And at last, he gave up to temptation, and opted to use the forbidden tool: AI.
He was really worried about its impact, and the morally grey area surrounding it, yet he felt he had no other choice. So at last, he complied.
He was greeted with a simple page, a simple text input he would have to use. This one time, he opted to only use it for basic creative ideas. He stated some of the parameters for his story, what was happening, and what he wanted solved. And then, a brief torrent of ideas came out. And most of those ideas felt really good and wonderful, such a big dopamine hit, he could barely choose which one was the most compelling to him.
Eventually, he chose one, and moved on with his story. Oh how pleased he was, having finally found the right tool for himself to get out of the drought of ideas. This would be revolutionary for him! And so he went back in front of his blank page, and managed to fill it within a session, inspiration having been renewed.
Yet, it didn’t end there, oh no. The slippery slope might be a fallacious concept, yet that doesn’t mean it never does apply. So, how did this progress? Well, with such great results, and the initial barrier having been breached, it became rather hard to resist it the next time he was confronted with a writer’s block.
And at first, that’s all he did, more and more frequently would it head back for the language model to request new ideas. But gradually, he started to interact with the AI to ask which ideas made the most sense, what would be best, and how to best utilize them. Ah, one more thing he wouldn’t have to worry about, he could explore these ideas to the fullest before even getting started with the writing.
And yes, it did make him more efficient, he pumped out stories faster than ever. Yet, he also became more and more dependent to this tool. The second he would stress out over his writing, he would immediately turn back to it. What once was an unblocker had now become a necessity.
And yet, that’s not where it stopped. For why stop it at the ideas themselves? Eventually, he started worrying about the phrasing itself, and the flow of his paragraphs, and simply had to see if this new tool could help him. And it sure did!
Yet, it did come at a cost. Eventually, he decided to look back at his previous stories, and realized that while he remembered most of his original stories written prior to his use of Generative AI, he barely remembered what he’d written since. What’s more, when rereading some of those stories, not only could he not really remember where it came from, he also felt no sense of ownership. This felt devoid of his own contributions, of his own voice. And well, this was also reflected by the critics, that complained he’d lost his voice, that his stories had lost their magic. He finally realized that some of the imperfections in his stories were what made their charm.
So…what happened in the end? Did the author simply realize that using AI served as a crutch, simply caused even more creative bankruptcy, abandoned it and things went back to how they were before? Well, of course not. Having used such a tool, its allure was often too hard to resist, and even if he did, he’d gotten so dependent on it that creativity didn’t flow nearly as well as it used to.
Yet, it’s not all gloom and doom. Eventually, the author went back to reading his older stories, seeing what worked well with them and why he liked them. He went back to writing short stories just for the hell of it, and trying to explore ideas, without any aiming for publication. As with anything else, creativity can be considered a muscle, one you need to exercise. And thus, he gradually rebuilt it over time. Yet, the Siren Song of AI remained in the back of his mind, and like with any addiction, from time to time he would fall back into it, and have to restart the process of growth from the beginning.
Yet, he still managed to once more find joy through the creative process itself, instead of purely worrying about the end-result and the expectation.